The evolution of the Tea Party movement | Washington Examiner

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Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen: The evolution of the Tea Party movement

Pollster Scott Rasmussen and political consultant Douglas Schoen argue in their book released Tuesday that the Tea Party movement will elect senators, representatives, governors, and maybe even someday a president.

Second of a three-part series, excerpted from "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System"

There were two mass gatherings of people in 2009. The first was expected and universally applauded; the second was unrecognized, misunderstood, and not even fully documented.

The first event was, of course, Barack Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009, when 1.8 million people amassed on the National Mall to hear the president's ringing speech, in which he said:

"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

Quite justifiably, it was seen as one of the great inaugural turnouts in American political history, a validation of his historic campaign.

But the other gathering, which perhaps did not have as many people, was the march on Washington on Sept. 12, 2009, when tens if not hundreds of thousands of people traveled to Washington, where they gathered near the steps of the Capitol to hear speakers, including FreedomWorks' Dick Armey and Brendan Steinhauser, the Tea Party Patriots' Jenny Beth Martin, and the Tea Party Express' Lloyd Marcus.

Unlike the Obama inauguration, which was a centrally organized state-sponsored event, this was a spontaneous outpouring of support. While it was mobilized in part by Fox News host Glenn Beck, it also reflected deep-seated anger about the direction and shape of government and extraordinary outpourings of spontaneous support, which led organizers to say that their movement was at least as strong and at least as powerful as the one that elected Obama.

And while that may be a bit of an exaggeration, it's not by much.

How did this all happen? It began with thousands of small gatherings, many of them spontaneous, over the course of 2009. ... The question has been asked whether the Tea Party is an authentic national movement with broad-based support, or a more limited narrow movement that has only been able to produce real crowds and real enthusiasm because of so-called Astroturf.

Fortunately, a large amount of research has been done by a wide variety of organizations that answer the question definitively.

The Tea Party movement is broad-based with wide support. Over half of the electorate now say they favor the Tea Party movement, around 35 percent say they support the movement, 20 to 25 percent self-identify as members of the movement, and 2 to 7 percent say they are activists.

And Tea Party protesters see themselves as being part of the majority in America. Eight-eight percent of self-identified Tea Partiers think most Americans view the Tea Party movement favorably.

Indeed, in our February 2010 survey, 49 percent of respondents said that more people should get involved in the Tea Party movement, while only 34 percent said they should not.

The data is particularly clear, and some polls have shown that the Tea Party movement is the most popular force in American politics ... and is increasingly been recognized as such by a media that was, at the very least, late to the party.

That being said, the most notable thing about American politics is its unpredictability. We simply do not know what is going to happen next week, much less next year. We live in a time of uncertainty and instability and it is impossible to make firm judgments about the future. But what the Tea Party movement does suggest, and suggest compellingly, is the possibility for anti-systemic third parties to emerge.

Both of us, in different ways, have written about the possibility of third-party candidates emerging at different points in the recent past. And we both believe, coming from somewhat different perspectives, that this possibility exists in the future -- be it from the Tea Party movement or some other force. ...

To underestimate the importance of a movement that has fundamentally altered American politics and will almost certainly affect both the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election would be the most profound mistake of all.

Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of Rasmussen Reports.

Political consultant Douglas Schoen is a partner in the firm of Penn, Schoen and Berland.

Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of Rasmussen Reports.Political consultant Douglas Schoen is a partner in the firm of Penn, Schoen and Berland.